When fireworks were slowly decriminalized in Connecticut, the shock wasn’t the barrage you’d hear on July 4th so much (that stayed about the same). It was seeing big fireworks bundles in the supermarkets.
No longer did one have to smuggle in the lowliest sparkler to mark the date. Now there they were at the Stop & Shop next to the fresh vegetables. This year, things went a step further when a fly by night place rented the old Hollywood Video store at Boulevard and Prospect to sell the fireworks.
Suddenly there were those big, bold signs you were used to seeing in farflung corners of the midwest, near tents at major crossroads. But this was no tent. This was a storefront like those year-round businesses in rural Missouri, where people would travel over state lines to amass their holiday explosives.
This is still a limit to what you can buy in Connecticut. This ain’t Missouri yet.
Bottle rockets are apparently still verboten (and won’t be deregulated soon, judging from the way people have been using them on YouTube). But there are things that are very much like bottlerockets except bigger. There are things that fly into the air and pop; others that shoot out beads of color, others that spit sparks for a time and then fizzle out. The brand name for the fireworks and the store itself was TNT Fireworks, an outfit that does most of its big business in the south, along NASCAR country, with just one of its “supercenters” in New England, in Londonberry, N.H. (live free or die!).
The West Hartford store doesn’t make the cut on the interactive map. It will be open and closed within days of the Fourth. And the inside of the store: a half dozen folded tables and their wares, says more about the quick demise of the video store business than it does the lack of product in the fireworks world.
Most of them are package deals with names like Big Blast, Big Timer, Grand 49er and Freedom Blast. They include items such as Blasin’ Rebel, the Artillery Shell, Magnum Force and Festival Balls. All probably dismissed by patriotic pyromaniacs in the state as glorified sparklers.
They are all very colorful and have bright lettering. One advertising flyer they have says “Product availability governed by state & local laws.”
In Connecticut, what’s permitted are “Hand-held and ground based sparkling devices that are non-explosive and non-aerial, and do not contain more than 100 grams of pyrotechnic composition per item.” What’s illegal? “All other consumer fireworks including multiple-tube sparkling devices that exceed 100 grams of total pyrotechnic composition. Novelty items are illegal.”
Still, I heard a lot of explosive things last night that sounded louder than 100 grams of pyrotechnic composition.
If you have any trouble with any of the fireworks you bought in Connecticut, take it back to the place of purchase Tuesday and I’m pretty sure they won’t be there.